"The last decade has seen a termendous expansion in the availability
of electronic information in all academic disciplines, including criminal
justice. Scholars, practitioners, and students of criminal justice are
no longer limited to the material contained within their institutions'
libraries. The Internet and other electronic carriers have opened the
windows of those libraries to other, remote information sources. This
paper describes the development and implementation of a course designed
to meet students' needs in this new information environment." It
also provides a sample of the course syllabus and the major project assignment.

Although information technology (IT) is often touted as a means of improving
the quality of teaching and learning, as well as enabling universities
to offer more and better distance learning courses, IT also offers the
potential for information overload. Educators need to teach information
literacy so that students are better able to negotiate the amount and
the quality of the information they receive. This type of literacy will
enable students to make the distinction between information and knowledge.

Writing center tutors are often immersed in composition theory, but have
little other contact with the academic community. Matching up faculty
with tutors through an email mentor program helps tutors be more aware
of the larger context of academic work. Each faculty/tutor pair exchanged
one email per week. Tutors believed that they learned more about the larger
academic community, while mentors learned more about the work done at
the writing center.

Argues that students too often put more effort into producing essays
than into their classroom participation. To help students make their own
connections with the material, teachers need to encourage students to
talk more about the material in a meaningful way. By establishing a computer
discussion about history, the author succeeded in getting students to
participate in class discussions more easily. The article gives some specific
insights into the set-up of the computer conversation, and some examples
of different ways it facilitated her own class.

Coogan theorizes the electronic writing center as a dialogic space where
students and tutors learn to value those off-stage voices and contradictory
impulses that inform their writing. This approach is opposed to that in
which the writing center is a fix-it shop and the computer is a type of
teaching machine. The text has five chapters: "Tutors and Computers in
Composition Studies," "Email `Tutoring' and Dialogic Literacy," "The Medium
is Not the Message," "The Idea of an Electronic Writing Center," and "Computing
in the Field of Composition." An appendix, "African-American Poetry as
Catalyst for Exploring Discrimination," includes a 4-week teaching guide
on poetry and discrimination for junior and senior high school students.

Davis, Wes and Kelley
Mahoney. "The Effects of Computer Skills and Feedback on the
Gains in Students' Overall Writing Quality in College Freshman Composition
Courses." ERIC document. October 28, 1999. EDR 435 097

This study compares the gains of two groups of freshman students, one
of which composed essays on the computer while receiving instructional
feedback and the other which composed by hand while receiving feedback
only after getting the graded papers returned. The study used a quantitative,
pretest/posttest design with statistical analysis. Results showed the
experimental group improved more than the control. Intervention during
the composing process will result in more improvement; computers allow
instructors to be more "up close and personal."

Dial-Driver, Emily,
and Frank Sesso. "Thinking Outside the (Classroom) Box: The
Transition from Traditional to On-Line Learning Communities." Paper
presented at the Annual Conference of the National Council of Teachers of
English. Nov. 13-16, 2000. ERIC document. ED 448 457

Writing pedagogy recognizes the importance of community in building better
writers. Online courses, however, pose challenges to the creation of community.
By looking at the different technologies available online, the authors
demonstrate how community can be built in a Web-based course through the
use of journals, forums, and document sharing. These tools help develop
students' interests and interaction with each other.

Dickinson, Sandra C.
"Taking Care of Business: The Repercussions of Commodified Electronic
Literacy." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Conference
on College Composition and Communication. Denver, CO, March 14-17, 2001.
ERIC ED 451 538.

Although the Internet has been hailed as "liberating," much
of the Internet is tied to advertising. As a result, advertising images
vie with hard content for the reader's attention. Because readers are
often unprepared for this visual onslaught, educators need to address
a visual literacy based on Freire's concepts of critical literacy. This
strategy will give readers the tools they need to discern the persuasive
nature of the images present throughout the World Wide Web.

What should the writing center do when a student says that s/he plans
to plagiarize material because s/he believes s/he can do it without being
caught? Gruber documents such a case, in which the writing center decided
to waive its policy of confidentiality in order to inform an instructor
of possible plagiarism of an online source. One interesting aspect is
that the student tries to argue the difficulty of documenting an online
source. The ethical conflicts within this situation are further complicated
by the ramifications of the ethical violations within the context of the
content of the course.

Jaeger, George. "One
Year Later: Description of a Freshman Composition Class Taught Completely
Online by Computer and Modem Hosted on a BBS." No citation.

Jaeger reports on a composition course taught by computer, with no face-
to-face interaction. He argues that face-to-face interaction is not necessary
for one-to-one interaction; that collaborative learning can occur under
these circumstances; and that in general this is a good way to offer composition
courses.

One problem with hypertext lies in the absence of models that demonstrate
the degree of cohesiveness needed to support a persuasive, argumentative
purpose. The linked nature of such texts invites criticism of its "collage"
nature. Such criticism fails to consider that collage can exhibit cohesion.
A "reading" of Joseph Cornell's collage tribute to Ludwig of
Bavaria helps to underscore the persuasive potential of the hypertext
form. By appreciating the poetics of the collage, students learn that
links are not randomly connected, but the product of a discernment process
in which purpose and audience are carefully considered.

Many writing centers use computer-assisted reading and writing instructional
(CARWI) programs to enable students to improve reading and writing skills;
however, few guides exist on how to assess the appropriateness of the
different platforms and programs. Two websites offer online evaluations
of different CARWI programs based on the factors of cost, convenience,
attractiveness, and effectiveness.

Kroll, Barry. "On
conducting electronic conversations."

Part of his syllabus for an IFS course taught in 1992. Initial instructions
about electronic discussions and how they were used in the course. Describes
the permitted types of responses to a prompt or another student's posting.
Gives examples of prompt questions.

Law, Joe. "Learning
to Write with E-mail in Money and Banking." Writing Across the
Curriculum 7 (January 1998): 1,3.

In a 300-level course on money and banking, students are assigned to
one of the newsgroups created for the course and must post once a week.
Postings account for 20% of the course grade, and must conform to the
guidelines outlined in the syllabus. These guidelines sketch out teacher
expectations with respect to idea development, interaction with other
students within the newsgroup environment, analysis of topics, and the
ability to stimulate further discussion.

Neff, Joyce Magnotto.
"From a Distance: Teaching Writing on Interactive Television."
Research in the Teaching of English 33 (1998): 136-157.

Examines the experience of one instructor's experience with teaching
composition in a distance learning environment through a televised classroom.
The instructor found that the medium affected the power dynamics of the
traditional classroom and challenged university policies meant to reify
those hierarchies. Furthermore, although students met at different sites
and had no direct contact with the instructor, each site still formed
a community of writers. Little research has been done in this area, however,
andthe instructor calls for more work on composition in a distance learning
environment.

Nelson and Wambeam summarize their experience at the University of Wyoming
in setting up a computer writing classroom and an online writing lab.
They encourage writing centers to take a leadership role in collaborative
projects to incorporate computers in the classroom, and also to avoid
marginalization in their institutions. One benefit of online writing labs,
they argue, is that more students, including part-time , disabled , or
site-bound students, can use the services of the writing center.

A brief survey of internet technology and its application to the teaching
of composition. Included are descriptions of web pages, local e-mail,
listservs, MOOs, and OWLs. Some urls are provided. Points out that these
activities need not take place in a computer lab, but are accessible through
the student's own university internet connection. Furthermore, although
this technology takes time to learn, it saves time for the instructor.
Students are entering university with more sophisticated computer skills,
and so will probably not need much training in order to utilize these
opportunities.

Describes software used at the Univ. of Texas, El Paso, for basic writers.
Software helps students generate and organize ideas, and expands editting
abilities. Contrasts with commercially available software for basic writers,
which emphasizes drills and memorization of rules.

Selfe, Cynthia L.
"Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention."
CCC 50.3 (1999): 411-436.

Computer technology has become so commonplace that it is invisible, especially
to composition specialists trained in a humanist tradition. By refusing
to see beyond computer use, however, educators fail to make the larger
connections between technology and literacy. Literacy is tied into culture,
with political and socio-economic ramifications, and to ignore the intersections
of technology and literacy is to ignore humanist goals to broaden cultural
perspectives.

Stroupe, Craig. "Visualizing
English: Recognizing the Hybrid Literacy of Visual and Verbal Authorship
on the Web." College English 62.5 (2000): 607-632.

In the context of increasing importance of Web technology and communications,
English studies should consider the role that verbal rhetoric will play
within the visual world of the Web page. Because of the importance of
the visual in creating a Web page, the verbal cannot supercede the visual.
The two need to interact together in order to create meaning. The visual
can act to interrupt the verbal, producing ironies and contradictions
that lend a subtle depth to the Web page. In other words, Web authorship
employs an elaborated discourse long associated with literary artistry
or critical literacy. If English studies could learn to recognize its
own literacies and logics in the hybrid practices of nonprofessional composers,
it would recognize its own continuities with these extra-verbal cultures.

Study used a computer to count the number of different words (types)
used in passages taken from 13 different well-known authors, and the total
number of words (tokens). Plotted the number of types against the number
of tokens for some of the texts. Differences in the type-token curves
used to infer differences between the authors in style (vocabulary use)
and lexical competence (vocabulary size).